Job Title: Project/Program Manager IT 5 (IT Release Manager)
Location: Irving, TX
Job Type: 12-month contract
Schedule: Monday through Friday, 1st shift; 100% onsite
Pay Range: $80 - $85 per hour
Job Description: The IT Release Manager plans, coordinates, and executes software releases across multiple teams and environments, managing the delivery process from development and testing through production deployment. This role requires 5-7 years of relevant experience and a strong background in release coordination, CI/CD, SDLC, risk management, and cross-functional communication. The Release Manager works closely with development, cybersecurity, QA, operations, product owners, Scrum Masters, and business stakeholders to ensure releases meet quality, compliance, readiness, and business requirements.
Key Responsibilities
- Plan and coordinate release schedules, deployment calendars, milestones, and dependencies across multiple development teams and product lines.
- Manage release pipelines, deployment automation, and environment coordination.
- Serve as a central point of coordination across development, cybersecurity, QA, operations, product owners, infrastructure, and business teams.
- Validate release readiness, including security, testing, change-management, approval, and quality gates.
- Prepare upcoming changes for CAB or other applicable governance reviews.
- Identify release blockers, assign ownership, drive resolution, and escalate issues that may affect release dates.
- Confirm deployment, rollback, contingency, runbook, and communication plans before releases.
- Provide leadership and stakeholders with concise updates on release status, risks, decisions, and schedule impacts.
- Monitor deployments and coordinate decisions when a release must be delayed, stopped, or rolled back.
- Ensure appropriate technical teams are engaged when deployment issues arise and coordinate incident response as needed.
- Confirm release completion, document follow-up items, and facilitate post-release reviews or retrospectives when needed.
- Track release metrics and recurring issues to improve schedules, checklists, governance, documentation, processes, and team handoffs.
- Gather, clarify, refine, and document business requirements to maintain stakeholder alignment and improve delivery outcomes.
- Ensure releases comply with applicable organizational policies and regulatory requirements.
Required Qualifications
- 5-7 years of experience working in this capacity; no degree is required.
- One or more of the following certifications: ITIL 4 Foundation, ITIL 4 Practitioner: Release Management, PMP, CAPM, or CSM.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to bridge technical and business teams and maintain alignment on release schedules, risks, and impacts.
- Project management experience coordinating release calendars, dependencies, runbooks, and deployment schedules.
- Risk management experience identifying blockers and deployment risks, managing issues, and ensuring effective rollback plans are established.
- Experience with CI/CD and automated build, testing, and deployment pipelines.
- Strong knowledge of SDLC, software testing, Git, and release/version management.
- Familiarity with cloud platforms and Infrastructure-as-Code tools supporting consistent environments.
- High attention to detail, strong organizational management skills, and the ability to hold stakeholders accountable.
- Must be a local candidate able to work onsite in Irving, TX.
Preferred Qualifications
Why This Role?
- Coordinate complex software releases that span development, cybersecurity, QA, operations, infrastructure, and business teams.
- Work directly with team leads, product owners, Scrum Masters, technical teams, and business stakeholders.
- Contribute to meaningful process improvements across release schedules, governance, documentation, and cross-team handoffs.
- Gain broad exposure to release management activities spanning planning, readiness assessment, deployment, risk management, incident response, and post-release review.
Work Environment
- 100% onsite in Irving, TX.
- Monday through Friday, 1st shift.
- Potential travel of 0-25%, including travel to the Peoria location.
- Collaborative environment involving leads, product owners, Scrum Masters, development, cybersecurity, QA, operations, infrastructure, and business stakeholders.
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